in a strategic point of view. Heber did not like to have them there; their presence was an insult to the Mormon Government; they were there ostensibly for the purpose of protecting immigration and the mails against the Utes, the rebel split from Washki's Shoshones, the Piutes, the Go-shoots, and other hostile Indians of the Range and Desert; but the no less important function they were there to discharge, and the Mormons knew it, was the protection of United States officials, and the preservation of at least a semblance of United States authority, in opposition to the Mormons themselves. From the roof of the Opera House their white line of tents could be seen plainly beyond the rich green foliage that embowered the city, extending like a flock of snowy storks lit in a broad high meadow to rest on their way across the Continent; and in this view were a charmingly picturesque set of objects. But unlike the poetical and migratory birds which they resembled, they were not harmless in their manners nor temporary in their sojourn. They were there to enforce taxes and drafts, if such were resisted; to see that the Territorial Governor received respect, and Gentiles got even-handed justice in lawsuits with saints, through the medium of inviolable United States courts; they were there in fulfillment of Uncle Sam's constitutional pledge to sustain all his nephews in the enjoyment of a republican form of government. Their preparation for the maintenance of all these rights and causes was of the meagrest- a couple of howitzers perhaps, and half a dozen little field-pieces, the heaviest carrying only a twelvepound ball. But the men behind the guns were the true batteries. Though they might eventually be overwhelmed by numbers, in fact, must be, if smouldering hostility ever broke forth into belligerent flame,— they would burn down the city first, and serve their cannon till the last round was exhausted; then, making their extirpation the costliest job the Mormons ever undertook, die in their first tracks on a mound of their fallen enemies. They were old Californian grizzly hunters, men that had crossed the heaven-piercing barriers, and slid down the soul-dismaying precipices of the Sierra Nevada on snow-shoes; old Indian-fighters, prospecters, forty-niners, and vigilance committee men men who knew

Fear by name, but had never shaken hands with him. Thrice or more had Brother Brigham prayed that these buffeting messengers might depart from him; but Uncle Sam had answered him as a higher power answered the other apostle, thus far, however, omitting to give him grace sufficient to bear them. They wanted to be there, curious to say, as little as Brother Brigham wanted to have them. They had enlisted at the very outbreak of the Rebellion, with the understanding that they were to go east and south to fight the battles of the Union; with most of them, I believe, it was an express stipulation. Judge of their chagrin when they found themselves compelled to settle down in their present life of inglorious ease under the Wahsatch their only smell of powder coming in skirmishes with Indians; the employment of their seething energies

limited to this cat-watching-a-mouse-hole kind of business; the whole gigantic sell resulting from the government's changing its mind as to the economy of giving them transportation to the Potomac, without allowing them to change their minds as to the validity of their enrollment. But though they grumbled (in fact, I don't know but it would be more accurate to say, all the more because they did grumble), they were as stanch and formidable defenders as the Union could have had in Utah.

Heber told his audience that they must cultivate feelings of Christian forgiveness to the blue-coat sojer-men; they were all poor critters that had to do what they were bid, and probably none of them would keer, of their own accord, to be sticking their noses into the business of other people, and be spyin' and smellin' around a community of honest, industrious, respectable people that hadn't never done 'em no harm inowayshapermanner. I don't know that Heber regarded this adverbial phrase as a single word, but he always pronounced it so. Poor critters! he continued, — with a sigh of such peculiar pathos that one felt he would like to eat them to put them out of their misery, how could they know that the time was comin' when they would call on the Wahsatch to cover them, and the devouring flames of the Lord should roast them till the flesh sizzled on their bones, and they should cry out for Death to come; but Death wouldn't have nothin' to do with their lousy carcases, any more'n you or I, brethren 'n sisters, would touch a lump o' cowyard manure when we'd just washed our hands to go to meetin'. Little good then would their shoddy coats do 'em; the devil, who had a mortgage on them and the contractors that made 'em, wasn't scared at blue jackets and United States buttons. He did sincerely hope to see the day, brethren 'n sisters, when they might all be licked clean up as the small dust of the balance, 'n not one stone left upon another; but till then it was their duty to indulge a sperrit of Christian forgiveness. O yes! them and their wives and their little ones, though they whirled 'em around on their bayonets and stamped the blood of their prophets in the dust, until the terrible day of the Lord should come, and the Saints could sit under their own vine and fig-tree with none to molest 'em or make 'em afraid. He was a friend to 'em himself— he was. He didn't want to see 'em ripped open and torn to pieces with just wrath like a gutted catfish. He pitied them, for he thought of the day when the oppressed would hev to rise agin 'em and drive the last footprint of the tyrant from the soil God had given to His people. He pitied the people of the States, all on 'em. They were fightin' their brethren for the sake of the niggers. Talk of niggers! Where were there miserabler niggers than the poor slaves that followed the fanatic Abolitionist leaders at the North? They didn't dare to say their soul was their own; they had to go and fight their brethren and get licked — they always were licked like hell, and he thanked God for it; everybody ought to that went into other people's premises and tried to break up their family arrangements; and slavery was a family arrangement just as

much as ours, brethren and sisters. They had to follow their leaders like sheep over a stone wall, and get butchered like sheep by the thousands and thousands; but, thank God, the thing was pretty nigh played out, and before long we'd see it. The Union was all gone to hell; there wouldn't be enough left in a few days to bury its carcase decently. There never could be any such thing as a reunion; henceforth and forever the North and South were two separate nations, and the South were much the better fellows of the two. If he had been East at the breaking out of the rebellion, as the Abolitionists called the Southerners' trying to keep them from stealing their niggers, ravishing their wives, and murdering their old men and babies, - he would have shouldered his musket and marched down to help those brave fellows, the Southerners you bet! But they didn't need any help; they had no more to do than they could attend to. What was faith? It was knowledge that the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. It was a belief that things would come to pass. Now, did we, brethren and sisters, believe that things would come to pass? That the proud enemy would be destroyed, yea, smitten, until they that were in the uttermost isles should be proud of his tokens, and Lebanon should not be sufficient for a burnt-offering thereof? Had we that? He hoped we had, though there were some that hung down their feeble knees. This was a great day-there was no doubt but the Lord was moving. He pulled up a new peg and sot down a new peg every day. If we had not faith that brother Brigham, if necessary, could be inspired by the Lord to tumble Ensign Peak into Salt Lake- and we might live to see greater wonders than that, only we hardened our hearts as in the day of provocation we had no show for heaven at all. It was a grain of mustard-seed, but it filled the whole earth. Wasn't that a miracle? But His arm is not shortened. He was sorry to see that faith was waxing cold. Some of the young sisters needed a sort of stirring up- the brethren too were drowsy - he wasn't talking about the hot weather, though it was so hot he guessed he'd take a drink (took a drink and wiped his mouth on his cuff) — it would be hotter yet, and no drinks neither, if they didn't yearn inwardly and seek the kingdom. Where was he? O yes-stirring up - till they should cry hosannah- with a sharp gad — a ten-foot pole, as he might say of gospel truth and exhortation - until they should repent and do their first works. Why, when they first come out here, weren't there lots of 'em that were glad enough of a peck o' yellow meal to keep themselves, and their wives, and their little ones from starving, and now they were riding around in their spring wagons, and old Buck and Bright that drew the Ark of their Covenant, their family ark, not built out of shittim wood, but ash and hemlock, across from the States-they were changed off for two-forty nags, and everything was to cut a dash; but what they had gained in this respect (here he adopted the famous gesture made by Everett in his "Washington" address, and slapped his breeches pocket till the chink rang), was more'n lost by the

fallin' off in sperritooality. But he guessed that what he'd said would bear fruit, and if it didn't he wa'n't to blame he had done his dooty, and now he guessed he'd wind up. He hadn't made a speech to edification ekil to brother Brigham's, but he was a horse of another color, and there was plenty in what he'd said, any way, to bring 'em into the kingdom; leastways, if he couldn't carry 'em slap in, up and through, to give 'em a saving hist any how, and might the Lord bless 'em all, forever and ever, amen!

After Brother Heber's sermon was concluded, we had another hymn sung with great earnestness, for it was set to the tune of the "Star Spangled Banner," and there was enough of the American element present to tinge the whole audience with enthusiasm despite the chuckling disloyalty of Heber. It is hard for Uncle Sam's prodigals to forget the old man; Joe Smith does not seem to take his place at all; and all the American Mormons outside the governing class, feel a sneaking thrill for the liberty pole and the spread eagle. One Sunday night a party of Conner's bluecoats got leave to come into service at the Bowery. The Mormon choir happened to select for one of their hymns that evening, this same tune, dear to patriotic hearts, and voices of 2 octaves compass. The boys who occupied a seat in the back part of the "Meetin'" had listened attentively to all the preceding service- had borne good-humoredly the invariable diatribes against the Government which formed the staple of Mormon sermons; and had conducted themselves with the utmost decency, in accordance with Connor's orders, to avoid all cause of quarrel with the Saints, until the Mormons began to sing the national air. At first they found outlet for their enthusiasm in joining the music, but soon found they did not fadge with the regular attendants on the sanctuary. Not being favorite visitors, they had received from nobody the courtesy of a hymn-book; and not being acquainted with the hymn, they sang Key's original words as they had learned them in camp. Having good out-door voices of their own, valuable rather for strength than skill in ritenuto and piano passages, they soon smothered the sacred under the profane lyric, and became aware by ominous scowls from the surrounding benches that they were disturbing the worship of the sanctuary. Always desirous to keep the general peace, they forthwith held their own, contenting themselves with such relief to overcharged nervous systems as might be afforded by beating time with their feet and fingers. Just as the choir finished the last verse, their ecstasy becoming incontrollable, burst forth in a volley of applause mingled with hurrahs. This was the feather which produced dorsal fracture in the Mormon camel. "Young men !" said a venerable bishop, sternly, from the rostrum, "you forget that you are in the house of the Lord." "Not a bit of it, ole hoss," one of the boys "spoke right out in meetin'." "What in thunder diye want to sing such all-fired nice tunes for, if you want a feller to sit still and bust himself?" On the present occasion there were none of the blue-coats present and

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nobody "bust himself," but after the hymn an elderly gentleman (of sixty, perhaps, or thereabouts) rose and approached the (more or less) sacred desk. He was of good height and had had no quarrel with his cook. His weight might have been two hundred; his general complexion was a cool permanent pink which shaded artistically into the warmer Magentesque tinge of a large, generously nourished, and globularly terminated nose. His clothes were that gray homespun which told of a Penelope among his wives; and it was right he should have one, for in some respects he was the “ πολύμητις Οδυσσευς,” the many counseled Ulysses of Mormonism. He was the historian and keeper of the sacred archives, the cousin of the martyr Prophet and Revelator Joseph - George Smith. He wore a pair of silver mounted spectacles; and his hair, which was rapidly turning white, hung in long, flossy strands from about a forehead whose slippery shine and intellectual height and bumpiness reminded me of Patriarch Casby in "Little Dorrit," while it suggested for its refulgence a supernatural explanation. Among prophets and seers we cannot expect to see heads crowned with festal wreaths, "Caput nitidum non licet impedire myrto" (although the nose did look secular and temporal); but this good man's polished poll might perchance be accounted for by the glaze naturally consequent upon the habitual resting on it of saintly halos and tongues of fire.

Mr. Smith spoke very well. I don't know how much inspiration is claimed for the Apostles who speak on Sunday, but if he was not inspired he did not seem to miss it, for much that goes by the name is inferior to his sermon in good sense and interest. He reviewed the Mormon past in a vigorous sketchy way, contrasting it with the present, to show how manifestly the Saints had been the peculiar care of Providence, and how much cause they had for encouragement regarding the future. His references to the early persecution of the sect were remarkably temperate. I was surprised to find in the representative of a family which had suffered more than any other among the Mormons from the rancor of the Gentiles, altogether the calmest spirit manifested by any Saint I heard broach the subject. His mood was humorous and hopeful, and when he concluded his speech his audience were all smiles and cheerfulness. One of the bishops then made a prayer; and after singing another hymn the congregation dispersed.

George Smith's reference to the persecution of the Saints revived in my mind the memory of facts without taking which into account it is impossible to do justice to the Mormon people. We see their polygamy, their disloyalty, their cruelty to immigrants passing through Utah on the way to California, and they become mere devils to us, without one bright spot in the character, ane atom of palliation for their spirit and their deeds. They are a people apart from the rest of mankind - not governed by the ordinary laws of human nature — vindictive, treacherous, blood-thirsty, wholly bad. Even among the wildest, most reckless of the neighboring